Current for 6.x-2.0-alpha3 Obviously there are many points at which advanced users will want to push the limits of what the OpenLayers module can do. In many cases, these changes can be make without any 'hacks' to the module, and before hacking, it is highly recommended to think about ways that changes could be incorporated into the module proper via patches. # Performance The largest performance hit of OpenLayers at the moment seems to be in the very large size of the OpenLayers.js library. The real route to fixing this problem is by narrowing down the set of components included in the Javascript file. In order to do this: ## Manually svn checkout http://svn.openlayers.org/trunk/openlayers/ cd openlayers/build edit full.cfg or lite.cfg to include the components your map uses. python build.py [yourcustomized.cfg] This will produce a compacted, slimmed OpenLayers.js file. After doing this, make sure to set the ImgPath and ThemePath in the OpenLayers administration - these are per-preset settings. The OpenLayers library guesses the location of its style.css and images, so if you make a compacted OpenLayers.js in an otherwise empty folder, it will fail in this task and have blank images and a nonfunctional ZoomBox control (the red 'zooming box') will not appear. ## Map Performance Using multiple domain names for layers will [dodge the browser connection limit](http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/OpenLayersOptimization) and allow more tiles to load in parallel. However, this has a bad interaction with the default buffer setting, making tiles outside the viewport load first in many cases, so buffer should be set to 0 if multiple urls are enabled. # Custom Behaviors If behaviors similar to those included are necessary, just clone the behaviors and create a tiny new module that includes the copy. The same goes for layers, etc.